It could be one heckuva New Year’s Eve party for hedge fund titan David Tepper — again.

The founder of Appaloosa Management, with more than $US20 billion under management, is looking at a possible $US3 billion-plus payday in 2013, which could make him the highest paid hedgie.

Why did Tepper do so well? Because as we’ve explained earlier this year, he’s a Democrat.

Why does that make sense? Here’s the deal. A lot of big macro hedge fund managers have had a terrible time of it in recent years because they’ve been so negative on policy for political reasons. They hate Bernanke. They hate high deficits. They hate Obamacare. They hate “redistribution.” And when you’re negative on policy it’s hard to feel good and just go with the flow and buy stocks.

Conversely, if you don’t have any reason to hate policy, you’re not going to let your investments be burdened by all kinds of nonsense ideas.

Now it’s certainly possible to hate policy and be long and it’s possible to like policy but be wrong on the market. But many big time hedge fund managers have had a hard time of it because they’ve let politics get in the way. That wasn’t an issue for Tepper, and now he’ll be raking in the cash.